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Last fall, Citizens Financial Group unveiled its “Bank Better” initiative, designed to simplify and make more personal the banking experience for its customers. The initiative includes a new approach to overdrafts –- no overdraft fee for transactions of $5 or less, as well as other updates to bank processes that similarly simplify interactions and transactions.

Then more recently Citizens announced a national brand overhaul that brings together all bank operations—including those that had been called Charter One in Ohio and Michigan—under the Citizens Bank name. Other brands also will be anchored in the Citizens name, including RBS Citizens, the commercial banking brand, which will become Citizens Commercial Banking, and the company’s consumer lending businesses, which will go to market as Citizens One.

This has all been against the backdrop of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group's announcing a series of changes to its operations in the United States. The U.K.-based banking group reportedly will be implementing drastic cuts to its trading and mortgage business in the country and also has plans for an IPO of its Citizens unit.

That makes simplification a smart strategy in more ways than one. “We’ve been pushing for the last year very diligently behind our ‘Bank Better’ initiative,” said Arturo Perez, CMO of Citizens Financial Group. “When we did our research, it came across loud and clear that consumers want their banking to be simple. Part of that came out of the consumer mindset that came out of the financial crisis. Consumer mindset is a lot more of, ‘it’s my money and I want to manage it. I want you to help me, but I’m not delegating it.’ So we had to make it simple, make it clear, [while] trying to keep it personal. That’s pretty challenging when you’re talking with a couple million people.

“The initial idea came out of the customer-experience world. There was a lot of customer aggravation [with processes]. We realized that there was nothing in it for us”—no real income or revenue opportunities—it just created more phone calls and customer aggravation, and that was costly.

And there is more work ahead. “I would say while we have quite a few ducks in a row, there are still a few stragglers,” Perez said. “But at the end of the day, it’s the only way you can build trust with your customers. You have to have proof points with your customers. You can’t just say it, you have to go and do it. [So this also requires] training your bankers on, what does this mean and what does it mean for their interaction with customers?”

To achieve that personal trust and connection, branch bankers are trained on taking extensive notes about customers so that they can “connect the dots” and meet unique needs. “That’s a hard one to get done,” Perez said. “When we pull it off and get it right, that’s when you wow customers, that’s when you get the leap improvement in trust.”

The rebrand is in line with that focus on simplicity and anticipates the day Citizens is a standalone bank. “Having a couple of states that operate under different names doesn’t make it simple or clear,” Perez said. “It’s an expensive decision. You have a couple hundred branches that have signage, etc. It wasn’t something we did lightly, but we thought it was the best decision to make as we grow with our existing customers and work to gain new customers.”

To be sure, some of the changes cause a financial hit—especially eliminating fees. But creating trust and building the relationship with customers creates upsell opportunities. “We have seen improvement. For example, we have seen increase in sales in the One-Deposit Checking [offering]. It’s a better product. It’s all about the medium and long-term gain.

“We’re constantly looking at ROI and returns,” Perez added. “I’m very much a measurement junkie. The rebranding campaign is just one spot in time. We are bringing the Charter One franchise into Citizens Bank, and different products will be changing name at different times, with kind of the big A-ha happening in April of next year when we actually change the footprint, the branches in Ohio. The ‘Bank Better’ [effort] is not an event in time. That’s multiyear work.”